The Supreme Court just days ago declared unconstitutional a scheme by school officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, to impose mandatory LGBT indoctrination on children as young as three years old.
The practical effect of the ruling was to force school officials to allow parents to opt their children out of the offensive teachings, over the protests by the district that it really didn’t have the ability to manage such a situation.
It was because of the obvious scheming in which officials insisted on feeding children a reading diet of books that “normalized” LGBT beliefs, including the scientifically impossible concept that boys can turn into girls, and the district’s instructions to teachers to ridicule and correct students who disagreed.
The school, with its agenda, moved well beyond exposing children to other beliefs, according an analysis posted online at Scotusblog.
It moved into requiring students to adopt the school’s “certain values and beliefs,” in short, its religion.
The analysis charged, “The court didn’t say that merely exposing children to ideas contrary to their faith is unconstitutional. [Justice Samuel] Alito acknowledged that not every curriculum dispute triggers a free exercise claim. The key, he explained, is the combination of normative messaging and institutional reinforcement. The majority pointed not only to the content of the books, which portrayed same-sex marriage and gender transition as joyful and self-affirming, but also to the teacher guidance documents distributed by MCPS.
“Those documents instructed teachers on how to respond to student questions or objections. If a child said that ‘a boy can’t marry a boy,’ teachers were told to respond, ‘Two men who love each other can decide they want to get married.’ If a student said a character can’t be a boy if he was born a girl, the teacher should say, ‘That comment is hurtful.’ One prompt advised teachers to explain that ‘[w]hen we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.’
“Teachers were told to ‘[d]isrupt either/or thinking’ and were discouraged from presenting these topics as optional or neutral,” the analysis said.
“In short, this was not passive exposure to diversity. It was, in the court’s words, a curriculum ‘designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.’ And when combined with mandatory attendance, a lack of opt-out rights, and the young age of the students – some as young as five – the court found that this amounted to more than discomfort. It was a constitutional burden on religious formation.”
The analysis noted the school was imposing “moral instruction for young children without offering a way out.”
The case was brought against the school by parents who charged that the school was violating the Constitution by imposing on their protected religious rights, with which the Supreme Court agreed.
The court found the school imposed on young children “real pressure to conform” to the school’s religion.
“For advocates working at the intersection of religious liberty and public education, this case is both a warning and a roadmap. The warning is clear: Ignoring procedural pluralism – by eliminating opt-outs and dismissing religious objections as mere bigotry – risks violating constitutional protections. But the roadmap is more hopeful. If school districts want to honor inclusion without coercion, they must offer parents meaningful ways to participate and dissent. Opt-out policies, clear notice, and open dialogue with families aren’t threats to diversity – they’re how pluralism works in practice,” the analysis found.
It said, “When public schools act as both educators and moral guides, they carry a responsibility to make space for conscience, not just as a matter of fairness, but as a matter of constitutional law.”
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Author: Bob Unruh
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